Fine. If you’re willing to take the pills, then why shouldn’t I be willing to use acupuncture? They offer hope because as you said, they might be effective. Acupuncture actually has double-blind studies showing effectiveness, so I’m on much firmer ground than you are.
I haven’t said that acupuncture is proven to work. I haven’t even said we have good evidence it works. In fact, without having looked carefully at all the studies, I’m willing to say acupuncture probably doesn’t work. So what? Surgery probably won’t work on my back pain either. If there is a 1% chance it will work, or a 0.1% chance, or even a 0.01% chance, I’m willing to try it, and I hope my doctor is, too. At what point do you think the evidence should be discarded? How unlikely is too unlikely to allow?
I’ll give my answer: if there have been double-blind studies that consistently show it doesn’t work and none showing it does, if there are no plausible anecdotes supporting it, or if the effect (not the proported mechanism) defies physical law, I’m willing to scoff at it. None of those apply to acupuncture.
Have you looked at the studies showing acupuncture works? The ones linked to earlier?
Musicat, are you honestly looking at the arguments that have been made and weighing them carefully, or are you just trying to bolster your position? Are you really willing to be convinced that you are wrong?
I posited a hypothetical “perfect” unproven treatment because when I said “may” (in order to take into account the actual risk and cost, which vary by situation) I was accused of weaseling.
The second part of your post, I just answered. I would not pay for those because they do not have plausible anecdotes supporting them (What makes some anecdotes plausible? I don’t know. How do researchers decide which potential cures to bother testing? Are the ones you listed as likely to produce results as an untested but anecdotally supported drug?) and they defy physical law. They also, for the record, lack the double-blind studies that acupuncture has showing (perhaps) effectiveness. Does that make a difference?
My problem with your argument above is that you postulate a perfect unproven treatment with no risk and no cost. There’s no reason to believe in this!
You then admit you don’t know what makes a ‘plausible’ anecdote and claim some treatments defy physical law. How do you know? What physical law is acupuncture obeying?
Then these double blind acupuncture studies (good science!) don’t show that it has effectiveness? Why are we using it then?
All our knowledge about what is plausible, what is physical law and what works comes from the scientific method.
Are you actually looking at the argument, or just looking for ways to score rhetorical points? I don’t believe in it either. but if a fictional treatment with no risk or cost is acceptable, then a real treatment with arbitrarily low risk and cost may be acceptable. Which is the point I originally made.
I can’t believe I had to explain this three times. Am I not writing clearly, or are you not trying?
Again, I wonder if you are trying to understand. Of course I know what makes an anecdote plausible. I was being rhetorical. Here’s a quiz–Do you think some anecdotes are more plausible than others? How can you tell? I’ll post my answers later.
As for physical laws, I would say acupuncture obeys whatever physical laws allow a poster’s roommate to trace the effects of acupuncture along nerve pathways. What law does it deny? Psychic surgery, for example, defies the law that two physical objects cannot occupy the same space. Homeopathy defies the statistical law saying that there are no molecules of the drug left in a sample and the physical chemistry laws that describe the properties and interactions of water molecules.
I forgot to respond to this. There are double-blind studies that show acupuncture works. They were linked to before I even entered this thread. have you looked at them?
Of course, no individual study is definitive, and the evidence overall is (arguably) inconclusive. However, the scientific consensus seems to be cautiously optimistic about the effectiveness of acupuncture. (Again, cites were posted before I got here.)
Yes. I may not be qualified to deeply analyze some of them, so I rely on those who are, and they say there’s much less there than meets the eye. And why, if those are so good, can’t they be replicated by any and all researchers? Could it be because they are flawed?
I might say I am cautiously optimistic, and then we would be in agreement, no?
But it might be more accurate to say I am cautiously pessimistic. Research that is based on the unproven and does not strengthen the premise over time doesn’t hold as much promise as research that has a strong scientific basis and improves over time. So far, acupuncture is in the first category. Let’s see what happens in 10 more years, OK? Meanwhile, you are free to try any medical treatment you feel is worthy, believable or not. My choice might be different.
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